


Frontotemporal

by SarieVenea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dementia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 15:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3983467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarieVenea/pseuds/SarieVenea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's called frontotemporal dementia.” </p>
<p>It isn’t, not really. Its an evil Japanese spirit that clawed its way from his brother’s brain and left empty streaks where sarcasm and connect-the-murders and eternal loyalty once lived. </p>
<p>Warning: No happy endings here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frontotemporal

_"It's called frontotemporal dementia.”_

It isn’t, not really. Its an evil Japanese spirit that clawed its way from his brother’s brain and left empty streaks where sarcasm and connect-the-murders and eternal loyalty once lived.

Scott convinces his mom to let him to move in with the Stilinskis. Its not much of a fight.

It cured epilepsy and asthma. But when Scott offers, the sheriff went pale and Stiles swallowed hard and it wasn’t offered again. Scott digs the fingers of one hand into the other and wishes he could take his own pain.

_“He could have a few years. Ten, at most.”_

At most. If this was his mother’s disease, he would have a decade to cram a lifetime into. Its not. And the Stiles now is so skewed from the Stiles before that they know they don’t have that long. Scott and Stiles’ dad don’t speak of the vow they made that day, the one without words. The one that has Scott bundling his fragile-boned best friend into the front of the jeep and driving away from a history test to get drunk and sunburned in Baja. They spend a week in the ocean, learning to surf and ignoring the problem.

When Stiles wakes up calling for his mom, the panic and disorientation refusing to abate even after a dose of alprazolam and Scott wrapping him in his own body and holding him while he shakes and swears she was just there, just talking to him, they realize ignoring this isn’t making it go away.

Not that they really, truly thought it would.

So they go home.

 

Stiles tells Lydia she should go out with him, because he’s dying now and it’s a sure thing he’s the best thing that will ever happen to her.

She bursts into tears and they spend a weekend destroying Scott’s innocence before he demands they stick to uncommon areas and let the other members of the household retain some semblance of sanity.

The following week they are just friends again, but she is a steady presence for the rest of the school year. Stiles grins at her in the hallway but he doesn’t ask again. Apparently they got it out of their system, and while Scott loves Lydia like a sister, he’s relieved he doesn’t have to catch eyefuls of Stiles’ pasty ass and find her underwear in brain-dissolving places anymore.

 

Stiles’ transcript is suddenly marked with asterisks. They mean “specialized learning program” and classify him as a retard, ensuring his diploma won’t be worth much but hey, at least he can keep up appearances. Scott tries to get him to slack off but along with loyalty comes stubbornness and they continue to waste brilliant California afternoons in physics and English literature.

 

One night the sheriff wakes up and Stiles is hovering over him, the look on his face a lined, aged version of the tiny lost 8-year-old who lay in a hospital bed and stared at his mom while his dad read A Horse and His Boy out loud, both of them stubbornly ignoring the slowing beep of her heartbeat. John opens his arms and lays awake until the sun peers in, his palm resting on Stiles’ heart and counting each breath as a precious thing to be collected.

When they go downstairs Scott is there with coffee and pancakes and a sunny grin full of plans for hiking and fishing and manly camping activities to be done while drinking supervised beer and watching the Sierra Nevada stars slide by.

Stiles suddenly starts touching. He slouches close on the couch, his shoulder bone sharp against Scott’s arm. When they are in the jeep, his hand is resting across the back of the seats, his thumb just pressing into Scott’s deltoid. In class, he props a foot up to nudge against Scott’s hip in the seat in front of him. Scott forces back the burning behind his eyes and lets him do it. He responds, eventually, a rub of a shoulder here, a pat on the back, a hand running over Stiles’ increasingly frenzied hair. Maybe Scott isn’t the one slipping away, but Stiles stares at him sometimes like he’s trying to remember why he’s in his life all the time so Scott lets him hold on to something.

His dad greets him with a hug now. Says goodbye with a kiss on the top of his head or a hand against his cheek.

They are all just trying to hold on.

 

Scott sleeps on Stiles’ floor because he can’t sleepwalk past him, and screaming himself awake is so frequent now that Scott can slide into bed with Stiles and hold him through the hallucinations and the terror of unreality without really waking up.

One day Scott pauses on the stairs, just out of sight of the dining area, half-focused on the phone in his hand and half-listening to the conversation as Stiles and his dad clatter around the kitchen making dinner.

“Son, call Scott down to eat.”

Scott looks up to see Stiles pull two forks from the drawer. He stares at them for a second, then looks up at his dad.

“Who’s Scott?”

Scott drops the phone and runs to the backyard. He spends ten minutes throwing up into a rhododendron and biting sobs into his fist before he can return and sit at the dinner table, ignoring the puzzled glances Stiles is giving him and the forced smiles John has plastered like cracked varnish on his face. He doesn’t want to know how John explained him to his son. He doesn’t ever want to know.

That night Scott doesn’t bother with the floor. He slides into the bed as soon as Stiles’ breathing evens out into medication-induced sleep and spends all night watching him, a hand on his chest counting his heartbeats. When Stiles wakes up, he throws a pillow at Scott, who is perched in the desk chair pretending to read on his phone.

“Dude, what’s with the early bird routine? We got places to be or something?”

Scott switches apps and takes a picture of Stiles like this, his hair rumpled from sleep and his eyes bright and tilted with a grin, thrilled and planning a day of shenanigans with his best friend. Scott saves it as his background and etches every detail into his mind. Stiles is forgetting. Scott won’t.

 

Post-Its appear everywhere. “Pills before you brush your teeth.” “Shirts in the top drawer.” “Scott has your keys.” “No orange juice with the red meds.” “Dad is at work.” “Doctor’s appointment on Tuesday.”

Some of them would have probably helped the household run a bit more smoothly a year ago, but most of them break the fragile bits of Scott’s heart every time he sees them. He’s not sure if there’s anything left to break at this point. Allison had torn it in half but Stiles was chipping away at it and crumbling it into dust around his feet.

_“He will eventually require 24-hour care, in order to maintain personal hygiene and his medication routine.”_

“Scott, um,” Scott looks up and Stiles is cupping his hands under his chin, over his cheek. Blood is trickling in horrible red lines down his throat and between his fingers.

“Whoa! What the hell?” His gut is twisting and his heart is galloping and the wolf is snapping its jaws to get out and lunge at the threat. He reaches for his friend, but Stiles shies back and Scott stops in confusion, glancing down and realizing his claws are out.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Scott takes a deep breath and swallows the smell of blood. He reaches for Stiles again and pries his fingers away from his face. The razor cut is deep and long and Scott clamps his hands over Stiles’ and backs him into the bathroom. He forces his head over the sink and carefully washes red swirls down the drain. Stiles’ hands are shaking and Scott pushes him to sit on the toilet lid and gently holds a washcloth to the cut until it stops seeping.

“I-I was just trying to shave.” Brilliant amber eyes meet his, the trembling moving from his hands through his shoulders and Scott lets his fingers press lightly into the soft hair at Stiles’ temple.

“I know, Stiles. Let me, okay?” Stiles nods and Scott pats the side of his head.

They sit in the morning sunshine and Scott smooths foam over Stiles’ cheeks and neck and carefully scrapes the razor around the bones that jut under his skin. Stiles lets his eyes drop closed and the shaking seems to ease under Scott’s quiet touch.

“You need to ask, Stiles.”

Stiles pulls away and his eyes are filled with pain and sparks of terror at what is coming. Gently wiping the remnants of foam from Stiles’ skin, Scott smiles in what he hopes is reassuring and not as panicky as he thinks it probably is. “You need to ask for help.”

Stiles opens his mouth and Scott cuts him off, knowing exactly what he’s about to protest. “I know, I know. I know how horrible it is, Stiles. I know. But you have to. Because next time it won’t be a cut or a bruise, you’ll fall or drive off the road or forget how to get back and-"

Scott chokes on a sob and is surprised to realize he's crying.

"It was a cut, a stupid cut, I'm sorry, Scotty I'm sorry," Stiles is reaching for him, his eyes bright with panic and Scott folds into his arms and listens as breath rattles through Stiles' chest and flows over him in a murmured stream of words.

 

 


End file.
